


Contemplation

by V6ilill



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection, Past Drug Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 20:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30078180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V6ilill/pseuds/V6ilill
Summary: Cait introspects by the fire, jealous of the sole survivor and Curie's budding friendship.Somehow, this ends with her convincing them both she's a great artist.
Relationships: Cait & Curie, Cait & Curie & Sole Survivor, Cait & Female Sole Survivor, Cait & Sole Survivor (Fallout), Curie & Female Sole Survivor, Curie & Sole Survivor
Comments: 5
Kudos: 2





	Contemplation

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [From One Cage To Another](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20570447) by [Bubonic_Johnson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bubonic_Johnson/pseuds/Bubonic_Johnson). 



Cait sat by the campfire, twitching her fingers. Usually, this was the time when she’d space out with a needlefull of psycho, forget everything that had gone wrong to get her shoddy ass to this point.

Usually.

Now she was clean as a girl from the Upper Stands, or so Vel had pronounced after the machine had retracted its needles. Cait stared at the flames, scratching at her forearms. The scars from all those years of injections still itched sometimes. Behind the veil of smoke and fire, Vel and Curie fawned over a particularly impressive fern. Despite Cait’s insitence that the robot would be right at home in Vault 81’s medical wing, Vel had given in to Curie’s desire for exploration. As a result, Vel now had a fellow nerd to validate all her most frivolous impulses.

Not that Cait was jealous that her only friend was spending all her time with someone else, or anything.

The redhead stood, pacing restlessly around the campfire. If she focused, she could hear the growls of wild animals far in the distance. It was always impossible to tell whether they were getting closer or further. She decided against focusing.

The sun had dipped over the horizon, leaving only a reddish residue at the very edge of the sky. Cait could never understand those philosophers who solliloquized endlessly about the “beauty of every sunset” or some shit like that. The sun setting was nothing special - it literally happened every day. Cait had seen prettier, more vibrant things on a psycho bender. Another joy of life she could no longer experience.

Even if the dependency built over many years got wiped overnight, it didn’t fill the void psycho had kept shut. Becoming magically un-addicted didn’t give Cait back her health, or anything to do in her life. In a few years, she’d be thirty. Cait had never thought she’d live past twenty-five. What was she supposed to do with her life?

Cait cast a look at her backpack, past the excitedly chittering silhouettes of Curie and Vel, casting her eyes at everything she had. A sledgehammer, slightly worn from use. A bottle of vodka for disinfectant and occasional recreation. A spare pair of shoes. Goodneighbor Special dried meat. Gloves. Bubblegum. Bobby pins. What else? She reached closer, rummaging through the pockets. She found a random key, bottlecaps, and a Nuka-Cola. Cait would have greatly preferred finding a Nuka-Cherry, though.

There was nothing for her to do. The future was empty. Damn the boredom, it was making her all introspective. God, she was starting to sound like Vel when she found a particularly impressive pre-war ruin. Would Cait soon begin monologuing to skulls? She hoped not.

The fact that philosophising endlessly was a stupid fucking idea didn’t make Cait any less bored. If only there was something to fight.

“Mademoiselle, this is simply something you must see!” Curie called out, pointing her pincer at a rotting tree trunk “I know of your disinterest regarding biology-”

“What the fuck are ya gonna show me? I’ve seen a hundred thousand rottin’ stups ‘fore you came along with all yer fancy science babble!”

“Don’t be so rude to Curie,” Vel droned “It is a fascinating sight. You should see it.”

“Fine,” Cait grimaced, dragging herself from the campfire. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do.

Inside the rotting tree stump grew a cluster of bright white flowers, stark against the blasted, blackened wood. Green leaves stretched out towards the sky, fluttering in the slight wind.

“Lemme guess: it’s a testament to the resilience of nature after the apocalypse, or some shit,” Cait squinted “A symbol of recovery, strength, yadda yadda.”

“Well, if you put it like that . . .” Curie made a shrugging motion with her arm implements. Cait didn’t know she could move like that.

“Your words, not mine,” said Vel “You’re quite the poet, you know.”

“Aw shite,” Cait planted her hand right into her face “Yer never lettin’ me live this down.”

“Of course we aren’t,” Vel nodded, bending down to take another photo of the flower cluster.

“Boredom’s really gettin’ me if I can spout such nonsense,” the brawler concluded “Anybody got a drink?”

“I had bourbon,” the older woman answered drily “until you drank it.”

“This unit cannot consume beverages,” Curie started getting technical “Alcoholic or otherwise. By the way, mademoiselle, are your drinking habits truly sustainable? Perhaps-”

“No need to worry, doctor,” Vel stepped in on her friend’s behalf.

“Least you ain’t a complete nerd yet,” Cait sighed. Vel smirked and began writing down the morphological characteristics of the flower into her science notebook. “O’course, I might’ve spoken too soon.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a nerd,” Vel smirked audibly, preparing to say something either hilarious or groanworthy “After all, it’s only with the power of SCIENCE! that I fitted rockets to my sledgehammer.”

“Scientific progress leads to many great things,” Curie piped up, reminding Cait of her presence.

“Whatever ya say,” Cait grumbled. She couldn’t even have a nice chat with Vel without the tin can being right there. The recovering addict (recovered? Totes clean? Who knew, at this point) turned, and trudged right back to the campfire. The dull shade of boredom reasserted its hold on her mind, making the world feel like a burdensome weight on her shoulders. The movement left Cait exhausted and wheezing lightly, but it was probably just another side effect of the treatment. All in all, nothing she couldn’t handle.

She plopped down next to the fire, throwing in more twigs from nearby, intermittently scratching her forearms. Curie continued to crawl over the local plant life, gently examining every little leaf and twig. Cait thought Vel would surely follow her, but instead, the sole survivor returned to the fire, sitting down next to her old friend.

Well, older friend. The two hadn’t been traveling together for THAT long.

“You seem unusually irate,” Vel observed, staring straight throught Cait with her vacant, spectacled gaze “Is something bothering you?”

“I s’pose,” the woman shrugged “I got nothin’ to do. Boredom’s drivin me up the wall.”

“Is it a one-time problem?” the scientist continued, tilting her head “Or a recurring thing?”

“I s’pose it’s been happenin’ for awhile now,” Cait continued, poking the earth with her shoe “Ever since I’ve gotten clean, I just dunno what to do with meself.”

“That’s not the worst thing that could happen after trying out one-of-a-kind pre-war tech that hasn’t been maintained in several hundred years,” Vel mused “Would you like to read my comic books?”

Cait opened her mouth to refuse - she wouldn’t be caught dead with something so childish! - yet that would surely provide relief to her boredom. At this point, anything to take her mind off the endless itching of her arms and recurring bouts of breathlessness would help.

“Let’s see what I’ve got,” Vel mumbled to herself, rummaging through her bag. The slew of random trinkets and obscure remnants of the past that she kept collecting clattered against each other. The sole survivor fished out a slightly torn leaflet, “the Unstoppables” emblazoned in bright yellow lettering on the front.

“Looks like the really kiddie shite,” Cait noted, her skepticism returned in full force.

Vel shrugged. “I can lend you the 8th issue of Massachusetts Surgical Journal instead.”

“Sounds like somethin’ yer new friend would like,” the redhead squinted up at the older woman.

“We’ve already discussed the practicality of implementing cryonics as described within the article,” Vel nodded “And concluded that it was a fairly new and untested technology, requiring perhaps years and decades more of study, before it could be used to reliably preserve humans for any given length of time.”

Cait gaped.

“Sorry, did I start rambling again?” Vel stopped the tirade.

“Nerds,” Cait sighed, then started coughing.

She flipped to the first page of the comic book. Heroes were fighting against evil bank robbers, using a variety of sharp and blunt implements to ‘non-lethally’ make them unconscious and easy to capture. Yeah. Cait called bullshit on that. Then the robbers were rounded up and put to prison. Why, though? One of them had tried to hold a woman hostage - that was reason enough to mark him as too dangerous to live and execute him right away. Raiders shouldn’t be left to their own devices, left alone so they could come kill more some other day!

Vel, having tired of watching her friend flip listlessly through the comic book, was waved over by Curie. Something about “comparing morphological traits of bloodleaf growths”. Nerd stuff, basically.

Cait continued paging through the comic. The rest of it was filled with more bullshit - brutal asskicking intermingled with messages about pacifism, and those stupid yellow squares stating the obvious. She glanced over to where Vel and Curie were conversing, lively exchange of words punctuated with liberal hand (and pincer) gestures. Vel was never this lively with Cait.

The redhead scowled and put the children’s book down. But carefully, so Vel wouldn’t complain it got smudged. The sole survivor was still combing over random plants, but the sound of a comic book rustling drew her as inexorably as chems called to a raider.

“How’d you like it?” Vel asked, leaning conspiratorially towards Cait.

“Not at all,” the woman answered, trying not to sound too irate “I’m too old for that kiddie shite.”

“Alright then,” said Vel and gingerly placed the comic back into her own bag. Then she turned right back, and returned to Curie, ready to continue their no doubt insightful discussion.

Boredom, now Cait’s constant companion, returned. Ah dammit, what was she, a whiny child that couldn’t deal with her own problems? There was plenty of bullshit to occupy her mind with should she so choose to partake in it. She coughed into her hand, staring down at the dirt. Taking a loose twig, the woman tried to recreate the skimpy, utterly unprotective “armor” she’d just seen in the comic, but the only thing she succeeded in drawing were some triangles and circles

“Artistic expression is one of the key traits of intelligence,” said Curie, hovering over Cait’s shoulder “Developed only by the most advanced species.”

“Sounds ‘bout right,” Cait furrowed her brows in confusion. What did the tin bubble see in those shapes?

“Ah, I see that you prefer the abstractionist school of art!” the robot continued tittering “My old colleagues appreciated creativity very much, even if none of them had any talent in painting.”

“Okay,” said Cait. So that’s how the robot knew of . . . whatever that ‘school of art’ was.

“It is quite unfortunate that such creative pursuits aren’t much appreciated in this day and age,” Curie made a quiet sound somewhat reminiscent of a sigh. Cait didn’t know robots could do that.

“Okay,” the woman repeated, lost for words. On impulse, she dragged another line into the dirt and Curie began prattling about the importance of art in the development of culture and civilization.

“I never thought you could draw her interest like that,” Vel came closer, nodding her head at Curie.

“Apparently, there’s somethin’ interestin’ bout me drawin’ here,” she pointed with her foot.

“Just a sec, I need to get my pretentious intellectual act going,” the hammer-wielder raised a finger “Now, this profound image of several intersecting circles and triangles clearly represents the deep polarity of human existence, its division between the separate, yet interconnected impulses to harm others and do good. While those impulses are different as circles and triangles, they are clearly interlinked, all parts of the same person . . .”

Cait sighed. She would never live this down.

**Author's Note:**

> hey, does cait and sole's dynamic seem shippy, for any reason?
> 
> Maybe it's just my paranoia, but I get that feeling constantly when writing them. I've always been paranoid about unintentional lovey-dovey vibes, even tho i'm aromantic. When I was younger, I'd be super scared I'd fall in love, after I knew I never would.


End file.
